Stylized Facts

"Weightlessness is like heroin, or how I imagine heroin must be."

The heroin imagery, I suspect, has as much to do with the motion-sickness meds as with the microgravity. They are a potent combination of scopolamine (an anti-emetic sedative) and dextroamphetamine (a stimulant).

PACKING FOR MARS
The Curious Science of Life in the Void
By Mary Roach
Illustrated. 334 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $25.95

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Despite clear views of the High Line, not one unit at +aRt, a condominium in Chelsea at 540 West 28th Street referred to as "Plus Art," sold in the fall of 2008, said Stephen Kliegerman, the director of development marketing for Halstead Property. By November of that year, 90 unsold condos ranging from $850,000 to $1.4 million were taken off the market.

After marketing resumed in May, brokers at a grand reopening gala suggested that prices remained too high. Mr. Kliegerman and others involved with the project agreed to keep some units at 2008 levels while reducing prices by 10 percent for a second group of units. Mr. Kliegerman said several units had since gone into contract. "We really wanted the market to speak to us," he said. "In retrospect, if we had a crystal ball and we were able to jump back in time, we probably wouldn't have done anything differently because you never know until you get to the marketplace where those prices are going to be."

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A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals. Sometimes daydreaming is counterproductive, but sometimes it fosters creativity and helps you solve problems.

There's an evolutionary advantage to the brain's system of mind wandering, says Eric Klinger, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota and one of the pioneers of the field.

"While a person is occupied with one task, this system keeps the individual's larger agenda fresher in mind," Dr. Klinger writes in the "Handbook of Imagination and Mental Simulation". "It thus serves as a kind of reminder mechanism, thereby increasing the likelihood that the other goal pursuits will remain intact and not get lost in the shuffle of pursuing many goals."

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